Unemployment plus dollar movie plus having failed to catch a lot of my secondary summer movies equals a pretty good deal, right? The moreso, of course, because only paying $1.25 to see Land of the Lost feels a lot better, even in a substandard theater, than paying full price would have done. They did a pretty good job of hitting up on a couple of nostalgia-meters, and a halfway decent job at a plot, and an occasionally decent job at being funny. And then, of course, there was the rest of the job they did at being funny, which ranged from iffy to my being able to see what they were going for to solidly unfunny to scientifically offensive.[1]

The story, lifted straight from decades of Saturday morning kid television, revolves around the fate of [Dr.] Marshall, Will, and Holly, who, while on a routine expedition, accidentally go over a waterfall and through a rift in the space-time continuum, landing in a lost world populated by monkey people, lizard people, dinosaurs, and all kinds inexplicable modern detritus that has fallen through, one supposes, other rifts that were less waterfall-accessible. The chick was pretty hot if unfortunately lacking in story relevance otherwise, the Judd-Apatow-friendly actor was about as funny as you’d expect him to be[2], and Will Farrell… it’s like, when he’s playing a pompous blowhard, I appreciate his talent. But as soon as the physical comedy shows up, I just want him to stop, as quickly as possible. This movie, alas, had a healthy mix. For the record, despite me coming down mostly negatively, I did not at all feel like my childhood had been raped.

[1] I should note that that eight-year-olds in the audience did find the last part pretty damn funny, to my chagrin.
[2] This is true whether you are an anti-fan of Apatow or not, I expect. I still haven’t seen any of his movies yet, only the ancillary stuff that floats around in his wake, but I’m pretty okay with him, to date.